Gen. Lamrimpa, Ven. Jampal Tenzin (1934-2004), was a close disciple of H.H. the Dalai Lama. He lived in meditative solitude in the mountains high above Dharamsala, India where he gained a reputation for his deep experience of the "stages of the path" practices. He was renowned as an accomplished practitioner of meditative stabilization and tummo (psychic heat) as well as other tantric meditations.

During the 1988 one-year retreat in the Pacific Northwest, a group of Western meditators devoted themselves to the practice of meditative quiescence (shamatha). This book is a record of the oral teachings he gave to this group at the outset of the retreat.